For this weeks Flash!Friday we were using themes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The themes I chose to incorporate were a soothsayer and fate vs free will. I didn’t use the optional photo prompt this week, but here it is anyway:
Inverness Constabulary Dog Handlers, 1969. CC2.0 photo by Dave Conner.
Fortunate
The fortune teller gazed into the crystal ball, “You’ll win a great battle and become king.”
The general smiled, then paused, “Wait, if you already know that I win does that mean I’m not victorious due to my strategic prowess?”
“Not at all, your fate is yours to control.”
“If my fortune is mine to control, how can you see it?”
The fortune teller paused. Normally people just wanted to hear how great everything would be. She wasn’t expecting to defend herself. She may have skimmed over a few of the chapters in her correspondence course. She thought for a moment and said, “Your victory is certain, but how you achieve it is entirely up to you.”
“Hold on a minute, if my victory is guaranteed then why should I show up at all?”
The fortune teller decided to cut her losses, “Yes indeed, don’t fight, that’s a sure path to victory.”
At the battle the next day, the opposing commander stared at the empty field across from him, “Guess they aren’t showing up?”
The soldiers, hungover, rowdy, and spoiling for a fight, decided that each other would be suitable substitutes for the enemy.
And that is how the fortune teller became the king’s soothsayer.
